“Cake, and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test. Thank you for helping us help you help us all.”

“The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked, and then there will be cake.” (subtitles say: “The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked [garbled] cake.”)

“OK, the test is over now. You win! Go back to the recovery annex for your cake!”

“Uh oh. Somebody cut the cake. I told them to wait for you, but they cut it anyway. There is still some left, though, if you hurry back.”

“I’m not kidding now. Turn back or I WILL kill you… I’m going to kill you, and all the cake is gone, you don’t even care, do you?”

US scientist had built the entire DNA code of a common bacterium in the laboratory using blocks of genetic material. The tailor-made synthetic (not artificial life) micro-organisms can become efficient producers of non-polluting fuels such as hydrogen.

A physicist with more than 40 patents to his credit would seem to have his career clearly mapped out. But Robert J. Lang’s first love is…folding paper. Origami is a very mathematical art. In many arts, there’s pure artistic skill. Origami is both.

“At the Enrichment Center, we believe that a highly motivated test subject can carry out rather complex tasks, while enduring the most intense pain, so in case you don’t make it through the testing, goodbye.” – GLaDOS

Shahrin (or should I say Dato’ Shahrin), your late dad (Ranhill Group Deputy Chief Executive Datuk Zahari) left one memorable yet cliché idiom as me and Rashid (now doing Ph.D in France) had an evening conversation while the rest of your family and friends seemed more interested with the Kelantanese dikir barat next room. This was in 2002, in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. While you’re still studying in Northumbria University. And your age seem more youthful than the media stated 31 years old — since it would be ridiculous for a 20-ish UMNO lad to get a Dato’, innit?

“Jack of all trades, master of none”.

He said but he left out “though ofttimes better than master of one.” The latter seem to ring true with your wedded thespian. She seems to be the cultured type. A professional model, an aspiring actress and sadly a shady poet — suspected with plagiarism.

Oh, dear. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing when it leads one to equate Natasha Hudson with Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri.

Yes, Shakespeare and Dante “plagiarised” in the sense that all creative artists at the time did — and in fact many of them *did* do so anonymously, because the concepts of the “author” and of “originality” were all but non-existent then. Poets, musicians, visual artists — they all not only consciously based their work on their predecessors’ work (often as homage), but also freely dipped into the communal font of stories/musical gestures/artistic subjects. Shakespeare and Chaucer and Dante and Milton weren’t inventing plots of their own, because that is not what writers did at the time. And they may even have reused exact phrasing here and there, but the reason we remember them and not all their contemporaries who were all also freely “plagiarising” each other is that they did it better — they took what was considered to be their raw material and made it something *better,* not patently worse.

If someone wants to say the same about Ms. Hudson (i.e. that her “poems” are better than the originals), they should certainly feel free to do so, and then I can laugh at them from this safe and fortunate distance.

In any case, Ms. Hudson’s superiority/inferiority to her sources is somewhat irrelevant, because in this day and age we *do* have the notions of authorship and originality and copyright and so on and so forth. To accuse Shakespeare and Dante of plagiarism is not analogous to the US lecturing people on human rights, however much satisfaction it might give one to throw in their cause-of-the-day into this argument — it’s more like accusing cavemen of adultery.

“I was so taken in by Tim Burton’s books and was thinking that it would be nice to have my book feature illustrations too. So I decided to have illustrations for my Malay book Puisi Indah Si Pari-Pari,which has 20 poems in it.”

Don’t you all treat the people you love differently? I would never understand someone who just stand and watch the person they said they love cry , and not do anything to soothe that person. I can only surmise they do not love – there’s no love in such person’s heart; only hate and a bloated sense of selfishness.

I think I miss my didi. Are you going for your blue berth already? :) I know it’s strange to feel someone who’s far away as closer to me than those who are around me. Life is never easy…right?

Dear jiji,

I wish all that is written is what I confide in with utmost privy, but I’m a creature of habit, the habit of a tortured wordsmith where his canvas of written mind screaming like the Edvard Munch’s The Scream — suffused with melancholy and anguish.

You’re right after all. Self-destructive relationship is always been the cynosure of my longings. The expectation is known in foresight but I keep on feeding on it. On hindsight, I spew the bitterness and again taste the cynicism as aperitif for the next sour meal.

Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), Irish-born British novelist and philosopher.
The Observer (London) “Sayings of the Week”.

I’m used to take umbrage on the most innocent act that constitutes the company of them. Where once I was invited to be the third in the company of two. I took that as a mockery in the looming presence of [his]. Mocking the idea of familiarity, as I would jutted there, seated on the urban cafe of capitalism with the prospect of disillusionment. I’m like a jutted and jagged rock on a jaded meadow — weary of the accusation and compromises. Whereas it just a simple invitation, that in retrospect, I would never attend. Why can’t I just leave it be?

Jealousy used to be the blind rage. As ever hidden like Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the titular character of [his] should never arrived in my simple mind. Whereas in the play, the arrival is awaited . In my mind, there should be in perpetual absence. Even a good-natured pity is hardly welcomed. As I sought the sympathy of her but got the pity of [his], the drugged and medicated mind of a feverish man caving in the state of malaise. As if [his] apothegmaticall word of apothecary — “get medicated, rest well”– giving me an apoplexy. Why can’t I accept the honesty of a dispirited man?

Jiji, did you know one of the character in the play is affectionately known as Didi?

An optimist.

Hence the optimistic approach to my romantic life, I supposed. The last happenstance with her consolidated this newfangled attitude.

A contemporary courting. A prelude to the ephemeral relationship that be.

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

That’s what she means to me, that’s how I feel as I lay with her. As I cry, her voice soothes me. There’s still love in her heart albeit an altered one — shaped by the sin of my past.

Love or perhaps empathy.

Didi.

P.S. : Jiji, you’ll never heard of this version of the story as I keep my life apart again from a confidante. Isolation seems to be the best policy for me, but I’ll always long for her — the ship of destiny — deep in the blue berth of my heart. I’m berthing, I’m basking. I’m sulking…less.

Perfection-oriented people have a natural intellectual curiosity. They search for perfection, but they take pleasure in the search itself, even failure. Performance-oriented people need to achieve performance immediately. Failure harm instant performance.

It shows how the luminance values are distributed. With the exception of a scanned negative, the scale runs from left (black) to right (white). The horizontal scale of the histogram measures exposure latitude, and the vertical scale measures quantity.